Parker 01 - The Hunter by Richard Stark Read Free Book Online

short on sleep -- before heading back to Chicago and separating. Parker planned on getting rid of Mal that night, but he hadn't counted on a double cross, not one involving his wife.
    The place was still furnished, and Parker and his wife stayed awake late, in the movie star's bed in the movie star's bedroom. They made love, and smoked cigarettes, and made love, ft was always like that after a job. He would be fierce then, and strong, and demanding, and exultant, allowing his emotions the only release he permitted them. Always, for a month or two after a job, they wouldn't skip a night, and often it would be more than once a night. Then gradually his passion would slacken, lessening with their cash reserves until near-celibacy just before the next job. The pattern was always the same, and Lynn had grown used to it, though not without difficulty.
    At two in the morning Parker rose from the bed, donned shirt and trousers, and took up the automatic from the stand beside the bed. "I'll go see Mal now," he told her, and headed for the door.
    His hand on the knob, she called his name. He turned around, questioning, irritated, and saw the Police Positive in her hand. He had just had time to remember that it had to be either Chester or Mai -- the two who'd been given the revolvers -- when she pulled the trigger and a heavy punch in his stomach drove the breath and the consciousness out of him.
    It was his belt buckle that saved him. Her first shot had hit the buckle, mashing it into his flesh. The gun had jumped in her hand, the next five shots all going over his falling body and into the wood of the door. But she'd fired six shots at him, and she'd seen him fall, and she couldn't believe that he was anything but dead.
    He awoke to heat and suffocation. They'd set fire to the house. He was lying on his face and, when he drew his knees up under him in order to stand, pain lanced through his stomach and he saw, in the dim fire-glow, blood on his shirt and trousers.
    He thought at first that the bullet was in him, but then he realized what had happened. The buckle, a silver one with a black engraved P, was mashed into a ragged cup-shape. Beneath it, the skin was purplish, and he seemed to be bleeding from his pores. His stomach ached fiercely, as though a heavy iron weight had been crammed into it.
    He stood only because he wanted to stand, not because it was possible, and he moved in an agonized side-shuffle, leaning most of his weight against the wall. His chest and shoulders pressed to the wall, he edged slowly out of the room and down the hall.
    He should have left the house right away. The far end of the hall was ablaze, and thick smoke filled the stairwell ahead of him. But he had to know which one it was. He made the circuit of the rooms where the others had slept.
    Mal was gone. Chester lay dead, his throat cut. Sill was there, dead the same way. Ryan was gone.
    Ryan had killed them both -- it was his kind of kill. And Mal had given Lynn the revolver, to kill him. Mal had set it up, that was clear, but they'd been in too much of a hurry, wanting to be long gone before daylight. She had fired six shots at him, and he had lain bleeding on the floor, but they hadn't made sure. And that was their mistake.
    When he tried to go down the broad staircase into the smoke and the flames, his legs gave out and he fell, rolling and bumping down, landing unconscious again at the foot of the stairs. The heat forced him awake again, and he crawled for the door. There was less smoke at floor level; he could just make out the door, miles away across a flat plain of polished wood. The parallel lines of the flooring rushed away across the plain to converge at the door, like the lined landscapes in a surrealist painting.
    He came at last to the door, and crawled up its rococo face to the ornate knob. It took both hands to turn it, and then he flung himself back, falling away, pulling the door open after him. Only then could he crawl over the sill and